


Killing Me Softly

by maryfic



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Magic, Season/Series 07 Spoilers, Stalking, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1409353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maryfic/pseuds/maryfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike is obsessed with Willow - and not afraid to kill anyone who gets in his way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Challenged by a friend to write a story where Spike is both chipless and utterly possessive of Willow, including stalking for multiple years. Willow must stay human and Spike must show that her can love without a soul.

_prologue the first_

 

It’s been two years since Sunnydale fell into a crater in the middle of California. Some things have changed, while others have remained, remarkably, the same.

 

The Slayers have a new base, new hellmouth, new city.

 

Buffy Summers, known now to all as the oldest Slayer in history, is retired and living the good life in Rome, occasionally making trips back the States to assist her former Watcher, Rupert Giles; with setting up the new Council, headquartered in Cleveland.

 

Xander Harris, one of the bravest human fighters these long years have known, finally got to take his long road trip, flying to the two states he couldn’t drive to.

 

Willow Rosenberg has long since finished her recovery and training in England, and headed to the fabled home of her ancestors in Ireland to escape the past and learn just what she wants to do with herself for the rest of her days.

 

And Spike, having gotten rid of that nasty ghost problem, has disappeared from sight to all but his sire, who keeps an eye on his travels as his childe moved restlessly through the British Isles and settling, strangely enough, in the country of his birth, Ireland.

 

And since his trip to Africa yielded something the blond vampire *really* wanted, a bloody swath of corpses was left in his wake. 

 

_prologue the second_

 

Isle of Maddyn, Ireland 1456

 

Alessandra Cassius McAgron hurried through the temple gates as fast as her aged body would take her. She’d just come back from a long journey across the channel to assist Henry VI, the current regent of England (and everywhere else it seemed) with his current mistress problems.

 

A war seemed imminent, and her high priestess had summoned her home months before, unfortunately, though there were many advances of late, travel was still slow if you were a priestess of the Goddess and disinclined to have any spare coin.

 

She knew her time on this earth was near over, and only the favor of the Lady had kept her alive this long.

 

Her thoughts were interrupted as a vision scored hot through her mind, filling her with agony and dropping her to the stone path, writhing and trying not to scream.  

 

Several young initiates were watching for her arrival and saw her fall. They quickly gathered her seizing body from the ground and struggled to get her inside to the Mother Priestess before…well, they weren’t sure what *would* happen, but they knew they had to connect the two women or something bad would happen.

 

The entire temple had been up in arms for months, ever since one of the lesser seers had seen something that had driven her mad. The high priestess had confined her to her chambers and would allow no one to see to her or try to find out what the vision was about, save herself.

 

The mood was dark and tense. Daily temple activities went on as before, the younger initiates doing their invocations and blessings, seeing to the small villages near the island, but every full priestess was on tenterhooks, waiting for the arrival of Alessandra, knowing that she held the key to the mystery.

 

The high priestess came to them in a most agitated state, robes half undone and hair everywhere.  “Bring her to my chambers! Hurry!”

 

The young girls were so surprised at this they almost dropped the seer, who had gone limp, as the vision passed, though no doubt the images were still roaring through her mind.

 

Her chambers? They exchanged a quick glance between them and decided in an instance. No one else would know about this.  Especially not the other girls. This was not gossip and giggling about love spells that were forbidden. This was serious.

 

They scrambled to obey orders, forming a single line with the high priestess in front, leading them to a part of the temple none of them had ever seen before, and it was likely they never would again. The Goddess was very particular about her high priestesses, and usually only one served per generation.

 

The event was finished as quickly as possible, the girls rushed out of the chambers and back to their assembled work, though no doubt they would be talking amongst themselves for weeks about today.

 

High Priestess Lilyan knelt next to the pallet her seer and friend lay motionless on, the breath just gone from her body and began the ritual that would have so many consequences, so many years past her death.

 

_prologue the third_

 

Sunnydale, CA  1989

 

“Don’t worry, Xander. My mom will be here soon,” Willow said distractedly, glancing around them at the rapidly falling darkness. 

 

The two were waiting for someone to pick them up from the park, having walked there from school after Xander’s mom failed to pick them up again.

 

They had already finished off the rest of Willow’s lunch (one Twinkie and one Ding-Dong) half an hour before, and Xander was fidgeting on the merry-go-round.

  
“It’s getting dark, Willow.” Xander was nervous, kicking the bare dirt with his foot and spinning them lazily around and around.

 

The two children kept talking as the park emptied, leaving them alone under the false light of the security lights as they waited.

 

A blond haired, blue eyed man stood about five yards away, near the swing-set, watching them interact. He wasn’t a man, but he knew who they were, knew their families weren’t exactly parents of the year, and knew he wanted one of them. His dark princess had seen it all, in one of her more lucid moments she had told him years ago that he would become obsessed with a red haired girl that would fill his existence with fire and brilliant, burning passions. He had scoffed, what could make him forget about his princess, his ripe, wicked plum.

 

The vampire known as Spike fell back into the shadows as a harried adult came running through the park, grabbed both children by the arms, and hustled them away, looking around anxiously as though she expected some sort of boogeyman to come from the bushes and attack them.

 

Scoffed, maybe. But he still knew Drusilla’s visions were accurate, and always, always came true. But he wasn’t obsessed. Not a chance in hell. The shadows melted around him as he left to find someone to eat.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Willow sat despondently on the stoop of Red Hill Cottage and stared at the sun sinking off the Irish coast about a hundred feet from her.  It was supposed to be better here, she thought, better than Sunnydale, better than Cleveland, better than fighting vampires and demons every night for the rest of her life.

 

But what? What did she, Willow Breanne Rosenberg, want to do with the rest of her life? Hide out in the cottage for the rest of her existence? Become an old witch lady like her great-aunt?

 

A sudden cough startled her and she looked up to see a small boy there, Aidan, she thought his name was, shuffling awkwardly on his feet, with something  held in front of him like a shield.

 

“Miss Willow? Ma said to bring you this.” He came forward slowly and offered the covered dish, she now saw, to her. “Careful its’ mighty hot, ya know.”

 

Willow stood and brushed off her jeans and took the pot from the boy, smiling at him, which only served to make him run away, muffled words lost to the night breeze.

She shook her head wryly. After nearly two years here, seeing her aunt pass and burying her in the village cemetery (strangely, vampire free) the locals still were a little wary of accepting her and all she brought to the old world, so to speak.

 

Glancing up at the sky, she realized it was about time for her nightly trek down to the local pub and her attempts to ‘make nice’ with the people who shared their land and home with her.

 

*****************

 

One more body hit the red dirt beneath Spike’s feet as he snapped another neck on his cross-Europe crusade to lower the population count. Got to do his part for the environment, after all, he thought.

 

A change in the wind brought his head craning around to look down the darkened road he’d taken the chit down and he shook his head sadly. “Angelus, don’t you have anything better to do than follow little old me around?”

 

He kept his back to Angel, kneeling to strip the corpse of anything worth it before standing and spinning in one smooth movement to confront his sire.

 

The taller vampire strode towards his childe angrily and gripped the base of his throat, stripping the bottle blond of unneeded oxygen.

 

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at, boy?” Yeah, he still had the soul. No, it wasn’t burdened with too much guilt nowadays.

 

Spike growled and pulled away, five nice scratches on his throat from Angel’s nails. “Why does it matter to you, you pillock?”

 

Angel hissed. “Because she is dying over there, and you don’t care enough to go to her and fix whatever the fuck you’ve done this time.  You’ve stalked her for years, when are you finally going to grow some damn balls, William?”

 

Angel never saw the fist coming until it shattered his nose, and by then he was too busy licking the blood and shaking off the blow to care exactly what he was doing.

 

Two vampires brawling in a dirt road five hours to sunrise is always an amusing sight, but not to the blind woman who came walking down the road determinedly, her wooden staff tapping the ground with every step. She stopped about a foot from them and hit out with her cane, her words a companion to the blow.

 

“Stop it! You’re acting like children, and combined you are almost as old as I am!” She whispered harshly.

 

They rolled apart and sprang to their feet embarrassedly, brushing dirt from their clothes and staring shamefaced at the ground, neither spoke.

 

Alessandra Cassius McAgron was almost 600 years old, and had seen more than most vampires on this plane could claim to or even brag about. She was the most powerful seer the earth had seen in a thousand years, and the Lady had granted her more time than she should have had for this. Never one to be ungrateful, she did what she could to keep the balance and the peace, not only in her corner of the world, but in the universe.

 

“Angelus, go back to the house. Spike will accompany me to the butcher’s.” Alessa frowned, appearing to look between them to where the girls’ dead body lay, but of course she was blind, so wasn’t seeing anything…physical, that is.

 

Angel bowed his head and took off at a good clip down the lane, knowing he wouldn’t hear the end of it. But at least Spike was getting punished first. He chuckled and immediately clutched his head in pain as a mental slap was issued from a dozen feet behind him. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short bit of Spike's thoughts while we gear up for the real next chapter. xD

Spike grumbled under his breath, but as they’d had more than a few dealings with the old witch, he kept anything more than a token protest to himself as he fell into stride beside her as they made their way to the small village she had tended to for this most recent lifetime. 

“He’s right, you know. That girl of yours, your heart, she isn't long for this world. Shades make more of an impression than she, at the moment.” 

Spike didn't bother to reply. Of course Willow was in a bad way. Not like he didn't always have eyes and ears on the girl – his own, or those he trusted. Which were damn few and far between these days. He’d been away on business when Willow had succumbed to the lure of the black magic peddled by the wizened idiot Rack, and by the time he’d returned, Sunnydale had gone round the twist, with the redhead spirited and hidden from even his prying eys, and Angelus with no idea where his property had gone. 

When Alessa had reached out to him, he’d been so angry, steeped in it, leaving a too visible trail of bodies across Europe to appease the roiling torment inside him. What he wanted was to go and steal Willow from within that salt and wax barrier the bloody coven had created. What he was forced to do was wait. 

Patience was not his specialty – not when it came to everything but Willow. And now he couldn't even see her. Smell her. Hear her. He kicked a pile of stones to the side of the road and swore, then again as a staff met his shin. 

“Mind your manners, we've come to the butchers, lad.” 

Spike gritted his teeth and shifted his features to the nice, smiling relative of Alessa’s that he’d been posing as until Angelus arrived. Gods help him if she kept their fights down to a minimum. This was the perfect time for few good hard scraps with his sire.


End file.
